Hi everybody, welcome to Living on Blockchain. Today we’ll be interviewing Borja. He is from Argentina and he’s transforming the crypto landscape there.
So let’s deep dive right in. Hi Borja, it’s so good to have you here. How are you doing today? Hey Tarusha, well thank you for having me here and well today I’m very well.
I’m here in Barcelona just reading the news about Facebook yesterday in the senate and everything. So I mean it’s a pretty exciting time. Right, we live in pretty crazy times I would call them, but we would touch upon that a little later.
Good, let’s start with you know you can tell us a little about yourself and how you got involved in crypto and the space. Sure, so well I’m Borja again. I’m Argentinian.
I’m an Argentinian boy, Spanish person. I’m 22 years old. I’m the youngest of my team of my partners.
Wow. I met Bitcoin, I’m a centennial generation seed and I met Bitcoin when I was 14 years old. Wow.
Yeah, in 2011 a friend of mine, we used to play video games so we had pretty good computers. Right. He came, my friend Alfredo, he came and he said hey check this out and he showed me his mining software working.
Bitcoin was like $20 and he had like $5 so so like 25% of a Bitcoin and I was like completely blown away by the fact that we could put the machines we used to play video games to work and get money and that’s literally how I got into Bitcoin and then I just grew up, I just grew up with it even though like I didn’t give it much attention for two, three years it’s something that has always been in my mind and like recently I saw a report that said that Generation Z doesn’t really like cryptocurrencies and I can for sure tell you that that is not correct. I mean I have so many friends my age and younger or people people I know as well that just know everything about Bitcoin, they don’t know much about crypto but they do know about Bitcoin, they like Bitcoin and many of them have so it’s, I definitely feel that my generation is super, will be super involved if they are not already into the growth of cryptocurrencies. Yeah absolutely, I feel that too.
I actually don’t believe in that research either. I think the you know the coming generation and the young people you know you are younger than me actually and you’ve been around in this space for some time. I thought that I was one of the young people in crypto, clearly I’m wrong.
So you know I think we are way much more aware and we want to sort of help the movement of blockchain to further our growth and you know the youth is so big about freedom and I think blockchain is all about that. A hundred percent, look I’ll just tell you an example. Last week I was in Vienna at a friend’s house and we were working from there and he’s got a little brother of 14 years old.
He was the one who showed Bitcoin to my 25 year old friend and he has like friends his age that are already either trading, investing in Bitcoin or just huddling with coins. I mean like I don’t feel that that report was accurate at all and at least myself being a generation C and centennial, looking at the people from my generation and younger, they will definitely play a huge role and big parts of the change we’re expecting like from the regulatorist and the point of view and from the institutional point of view, it’ll all come with the new generations right? I mean right now there are like dinosaurs in power like Bitcoin. Yeah yeah that’s so true you know.
It is actually the new generation which is going to bring about the change. It is the new generation that understands the technology well as well. As you said that you know your friend’s 14 year old brother, he knew more so that just goes on to say a lot.
Exactly and like tell a 14 year old kid that everything’s instant right now and also with cryptocurrencies. Tell him to pay like a friend in other parts of the world, just send money, a friend of his from like video games or whatever. Tell him to do a bank transfer and not only that but also tell him that the bank transfer will delay like some days.
He will be like what what is that? I’m not going to waiting for that. Yeah yeah so it is it is the age of instant gratification and I think blockchain brings that as well. So it is about a lot about freedom of choice and freedom of doing things a certain way that you want them to.
We’ve had it with banks telling us how to spend our money. A hundred percent. I couldn’t agree more with that.
Oh excellent. So tell me a little bit more about the current project that you’re working on. Yeah so I’m currently working on Lucas with three co-founders.
We have a Lorenzo Alente, he’s a mechanical engineer. It’s myself and we have a great technical team of Peter Korolev that comes from Bankex and Alex Lebed that comes from Stable Unit. So essentially what we’re doing is we’re building a bridge between fiat and cryptocurrencies right now focusing on Latin America.
So as you know like for example in Argentina last year we had a 110 percent evaluation, 50 percent inflation. Same thing but exponentially worse in Venezuela and usually like this pattern of weak economies, weak currencies repeats all over emerging markets and Latin America of course. So essentially what we’re doing is we want to and we are executing on that.
We’re taking crypto every person in these regions. I mean many people criticize Bitcoin as a volatile currency but Bitcoin is less volatile than the Argentine peso and performs better than the Argentine peso too. So like if last year which was one of the worst years for Bitcoin instead of having Argentine pesos, if you had Bitcoin your investment would have been better or your assets would have performed better than the Argentine peso.
So we already see how Bitcoin is much much better than a lot of currencies, national currencies. Right, it’s much better than you know so many national currencies. Yeah I mean like it has even though in the current state which is I agree that it’s volatile and unstable, even in this state it’s already better than many of the current systems we have.
So we want to make sure that we provide this new vehicle of a way of living because like it’s not only about having a different currency, it’s about having financial freedom, more privacy, it’s about being able to pay whoever you want, wherever he is, at any time you want, no boundaries, no limits. So we want to take this thing called Bitcoin that is really a new lifestyle and that provides new quality life to every single person that has been suffering their own national currencies for years and years. Because like if you’re from any of these countries, Latin America, emerging markets, like you suffer your country, it’s insane but you really suffer your country.
So we see that this currency called Bitcoin is definitely something that will solve many people’s problems even with the problems that it has today. Bitcoin still solves so many pains and so many needs from people from these countries. But yeah what we’re doing is that right now we have spent all our like early stage paying lawyers and accountants and more lawyers and more accountants to get the legal structure right and to get like to make a corporate structure that really allows us what to do, what we want to do, that is really bank the unbanked and take financial services to everyone.
Because we also have to remember that Bitcoin is the first step to decentralize finance. So like people will already, I mean people would not need any banks at all and that’s what we want to do. We want to really give financial freedom to people and that’s what we’re doing.
Absolutely, so that’s wonderful. I think you know all of us in the blockchain community we are somehow you know we are trying to push the cause for you know banking the unbanked and it’s wonderful that you guys are doing it in Argentina. So what is the policy like, what is the law like in Argentina regarding the you know crypto blockchain projects? Well that’s a good question.
The policy is like it’s really open around here as long as you are compliant and as long as you do the things that you have to do with the law things are okay. Let’s see just to give you some form of context, Argentina is a country that is constantly in crisis and when your country is constantly in crisis you just need solutions. You don’t care what solution you bring, you just care about bringing a solution.
So when companies like start thriving in these countries and they start doing well and they pay taxes and they contribute to the economy, like really the governments don’t care it’s bitcoin or it’s whatever, they don’t care that there is a company that is performing well and it’s like being compliant with the law and with the taxes and with everything. So like why cut that progress right? So essentially they are very helpful, they are very good, it’s easy to work with them and it’s also good to have direct relationships with the regulatory entities. However it is also something as it’s completely unregulated and like I tell investors in our pipeline and just partners and everything, like we don’t have licenses because licenses do not exist.
What we have is a great puzzle because like to get, and this goes between quotation marks, licenses which again do not exist. Instead of doing that you just need very good lawyers and very good accountants that help you to register your company under the right categories, under the right specifications that would allow your business to perform certain actions, corporate actions and to be liable to certain taxes as well. Because in the end this is a game of lawyers and accountants and then it all comes to execution.
But if you don’t have like the correct corporate structure it’s going to be super hard. The problem here is again as it’s unregulated it’s really complicated to know what is going to happen once regulations come. So we have some plans, contingency plans for that.
We want to make sure that whenever regulations come we want to be one of the companies that makes through that. Okay so that’s excellent. Do you, right now you’re saying because there is no policy, there are no licenses so it basically comes down to corporate structure of the company.
Completely. I mean it’s completely about that. It’s really there is no straightforward to doing this.
It’s more like a puzzle and a riddle. And yeah definitely it all comes to a game of who’s got the best accountants and lawyers to really make things work. And that’s why we have been spending so many resources on that as well.
And then we just have a really strong corporate responsibility area. I mean we donate five percent of all the profits we make into social environmental impact. Yeah I was just checking your website and I was so impressed by the landing page and you know how you sort of donate five percent.
I think that is wonderful. We’ll talk more about that as well. I totally want to cover that.
So essentially we were not born because we wanted to make a crypto company. We were born because we understand that we are in the verge of creating completely new financial systems for everyone. We really understand these times, these years as a breaking point of how the world is going to be built towards the future.
So coming from a region where everything is inequality so big and many times things are so unfair. And our team comes from very lucky families and everything but we are deeply moved by how again inequality is around here. So we really wanted to embrace this breaking point at which we stand from a technological and social point of view to make a real change and to make something different.
So when we started this we didn’t say let’s do a crypto exchange or brokerage. We just said let’s build a new economy and we believe that the problems in the future will need to be solved by everyone. It’s not enough with only governments taking care of the environment and social problems.
It’s not enough and the proof of that is that our current state and also we see how private companies are gaining so so much power. I mean it’s so hard and we believe it’s impossible for governments to be the only ones who address again social environmental problems. So we said why not creating the first company that has at the core of its business to create social and environmental impact and change and settle this as the future of the economy as the future where everyone is involved in making a change.
We all make money of course. If you don’t make money like you’re shutting down the business. Yeah exactly but why not make money and make impact and why not make it in a way so that as you the more you grow the more impact you make.
I mean our the impact to make is directly related and it’s directly pegged and tied to our growth. So the more we grow the more the societies and local communities will benefit. So it’s all about that.
We really wanted to create a different future a future where companies are deeply involved with communities and we saw really no better way than saying you know what we’ll just give transparency to what we do and we’ll donate five percent of all the money that all the profits we do and it’s under development but it’s going to be a truly open source and open for people. It’s the users who will choose where these funds are destined to because in the end we want to give the power to the customers and if you as a customer are worried about the forests in your local community then you can just open a pool to support the forest in your community and then anyone will be able to choose that cause as a destination for five percent of our profits. So it all comes wherever we make the profits we reinvest in that place so as a user you you will only be able to make us donate five percent of what we make into initiatives in your country.
And the second concept that this brings is complete transparency because if you buy let’s say one bitcoin and we tell you that we just donated five dollars to whatever cost you chose that means that we made a hundred dollars of profit on the bitcoin you bought. So that means that you know exactly how our business model works and that means again that if you see that our price of bitcoin let’s say in our market is a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars let’s say and we made a hundred dollars in profit because we donated five dollars or just five percent then you can say okay these guys are if the bitcoin is for a thousand and they are earning a hundred they are putting a markup of like a little bit above of ten percent. So then people will say okay these guys are making a hundred bucks per bitcoin with bitcoin at a thousand and they are donating five okay so what about all the exchanges and markets that have bitcoin above one thousand right and that they are keeping all the money for themselves.
I mean they are really really really exploiting the prices and we’re paying really expensive prices and at the same time they will be able to say okay businesses that have bitcoin below a thousand they have very good prices because we definitely have like very good prices so our our competition comes down to who provides the best intrinsic value to our customers. I mean we really believe that everybody in the market almost everybody is just fighting for superficial futures like I have like one billion orders processing and matching engine oh yeah but my matching engine has like 15 layers of whatever and we believe that anybody can have the same tech like come on if I just get hire your engineers I’ll tell them to make the same exchange or engine you have. So we believe that in this coming future it won’t be about a tech because everybody can achieve the same tech talent is all over the place yeah it will come down to who provides the best intrinsic value who gives the most to the customers and to society so not only we donate but we’re also beginning a program where we’ll be paying with cashbacks to people so we want to make sure that people have a social and economic incentives to operate with us and not just like oh yeah like these guys have a super matching engine which I don’t even notice if it’s working or not you know like right yeah no it’s like I understand what you’re saying there are a lot of manatee you know metrics here and people say a lot of big numbers to confound users but ultimately it can be you know it comes down to what is the kind of value that you’re bringing to the table what are you giving back to the community and I think it’s wonderful that you’re doing that with Lucas.
So what is you know people’s outlook in Argentina towards crypto and blockchain in general? So I’ll tell you the how a crypto began in Argentina so so I can give you like a good context and a good idea of how everything started so basically five years ago people six years ago people weren’t allowed to buy a foreign currency okay so you were in you were in Argentina and you were not able not allowed to buy US dollars okay so then something again called Bitcoin which was rated at a USD price because like we all talk about Bitcoin at how much per dollar right how much dollars per Bitcoin yeah so Bitcoin became like the main gateway to actually buy US dollars in Argentina okay so most a lot of people were buying US dollars through Bitcoin and that’s really how how it began how it became big so just thinking thinking about that concept context we can understand like how people in these regions in these countries were sometimes like freedom a is not the most a big thing let’s say yeah sometimes not always right where where your countries set barriers or blockades or just obstacles for the population yeah people understood how crypto and blockchain can become a solution for this and another example is you have so many people living in Argentina sending money abroad to Venezuela Colombia Peru not with Western Union not with MoneyGram not with banks but with Bitcoin right in Argentina sorry it’s become very big in Argentina because of the kind of policies that are in place so in in terms of remittances etc my understanding is that it has become because people want to sort of have the freedom to buy currencies and they’re doing that via Bitcoin exactly I mean like it comes to what we talked about a little bit before people in these places they don’t care about the solution they just care that there is a solution maybe cryptocurrencies and blockchain are a solution for many of the problems we have that’s why like it’s something that I love to say like I believe that if I have to divide the world into two like north and south hemisphere like developed and undeveloped countries let’s say developed countries have all the tech right 100% agreed but we have the use case right right yeah the use cases are happening yes yeah yeah the use cases are happening you know in all of these areas where a Bitcoin can actually you know you you feel the power of the technology because it’s actually helping you solve a very real problem which is an everyday problem 100% like in Venezuela you can pay you can go have dinner to a restaurant and you can pay like in Litecoin or Bitcoin right right it’s wonderful to say that you know and in some parts of the world where people are not able to understand crypto so much and they have a very bleak outlook towards it it’s so wonderful and heartwarming to see these kind of you know visuals and articles that you know you can actually go out and then have dinner in Litecoin that’s why there is cryptocurrency I think 100% and yeah like the use case is so strong so strong because uh if you look at Bitcoin as a currency with the monetary policy and everything Bitcoin is already better than our currencies so it’s strong in that use case as a currency it’s already stronger than ours if you look at sending money abroad and international transfers that people use this here a lot because they send money to their families back home because many of them have poor families and so on like that’s another use case that works much better than the normal system if you look at corruption and transparent then blockchain is another use and literally everything about the technology is a use case down here and that’s why it’s so beautiful and so much this is this is wonderful to hear that you know that people are welcoming towards this new technology and they’re not fearful of it and they’re actually using it this is absolutely wonderful so I was checking your bio and I saw that you graduated from Draper University how was your experience in that particular program I think you were in a program right yeah so the Draper program is an excellent program I’m happy I was happily selected as an ambassador for them as well and yeah it’s a great time it’s five weeks where you take a deep dive into all of the emerging and deep technologies around the world and a lot of cryptocurrencies and blockchain as well because of course Tim Draper is like one of the Bitcoin evangelists out there so I’m pretty sure that he made a he wanted to make sure that we also got a lot of crypto we spent a lot of time with Tim actually we went camping with him had a lot of sessions with him and received feedback from him about our companies and so on and yeah overall it was so magic meeting just people from it was 65 people from 26 different countries so you can imagine the diversity people from South America, North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Middle East it was it was really really good and definitely super recommended for anyone to go and yeah it’s it’s a definitely it’s a really good place just to take a deep dive into the Silicon Valley knowing just having great entrepreneurs that have exited their businesses successful people that have like built very large companies to take a look at their experiences and they more I think that all of them speak directly from the heart and like just let people know about what’s the difficulties they will face because I mean being an entrepreneur you need to be insane to be an entrepreneur like yeah being an entrepreneur and I mean like you’re an entrepreneur yourself it’s like the worst thing I mean it’s the worst thing ever and the best thing ever but but sometimes it’s like come on man it’s it’s a it’s it’s so crazy like the other day it’s such a roller coaster the other day we had two calls with two providers right one of our providers which was like looked everything that was so good so great their company was like for what they had told us the previous week on the previous call they were like everything that we needed and then we had these guys that we didn’t really feel comfortable we in the first call we thought that they were not really good and so on yeah we have the we have the follow-up call the one that turned out to be amazing and everything was actually super nuts he like contradicted everything of what he said the previous week like all of what he painted was not real yeah the other guys which we didn’t give like we wouldn’t bet one dollar for it they actually said okay we want to put money in your company as well so like we were like oh man this is such a classic entrepreneurial day like there’s so many ups and downs in a day like emotional upheaval and then you know you’re doing fine yeah I mean how crazy can it get it’s like yeah you are super you get the best news ever and then at the same time you’re like getting the worst user so um so but it’s also it’s a refreshing I mean our team is super resilient and super like we embrace we embrace chaos because we come from countries that live in chaos so for us being in a roller coaster is like where we were born and raised um but it’s I love that very I mean like imagine you live in a country where every every year you have like 30 inflation devaluation I mean it’s just completely insane it is I mean yeah I mean you I cannot plan for tomorrow because I don’t know if you if you make it uh past today that’s how you live in in South America but anyways it’s it’s always really good to like um listen to really top-notch people in the Silicon Valley I mean that maybe you believe that they are gods or out of like they came out of a UFO right see that they are just human beings just like you and with just resilience hard work and being as prudent and trying to make the best decisions based on experience as possible anything is possible so yeah I think entrepreneurs everywhere have a very similar kind of journey uh they’re usually you know a mad bunch who are really trying to bet against all odds and there’s a lot of emotional people but ultimately what it comes down to is a lot of smart work and a perseverance ultimately as you said you know it’s you know resilience on the part of those entrepreneurs who’ve made it big and then when you sort of connect uh it somehow makes your struggles feel a little easier there is a sense of camaraderie right that you know you there is a community who goes through the exact same thing as you are and there is support then a hundred percent I mean a hundred percent and it’s a it’s very important like this advice for every person that wants to be an entrepreneur if you’re I mean if you’re crazy enough like it’s the best I mean and just yesterday we were talking about it with Lorenzo my co-founder Lorenzo Valente this was this is like the first business he has built right and I was asking him how he felt and everything and yeah we’re talking about how insane it is to like as an entrepreneur you create value out of thin air because like if you start making um that money creating that value yeah it’s because somebody else nobody else was doing it you know so it’s um it’s really so crazy how um you are feeling a hole where there was nothing and you’re really creating value and you you you see money and you see growth and you see new people coming in and it’s like completely insane and gratifying to like see your own baby grow but again you need to be ready to you need to be ready to like for chaos and a combat zone and a war zone because yeah being an entrepreneur is is being perpetually in the war zone yeah yeah I mean you need every day I mean there’s there’s nothing but problems and you need to be the person who brings only solutions and that’s why I mean you you would agree with me um I mean at least we look for people that they just bring solutions like if you ever have as a startup if you ever have somebody that brings problems you already have like a rain of problems like a cascade of problems yeah yeah so it’s so important to bring uh problem solvers and it’s uh it’s uh but it’s just beautiful yeah it’s really very fulfilling as well you’ve also been a part of g20 young entrepreneur alliance so uh what exactly is uh the motivation behind that particular uh group and alliance what did you learn so so the g20yea is um it’s a great group it’s a group of young young individuals um that are selected from the uh commerce chambers and production chambers from uh they’re all from each of the countries and um it’s it’s usually um high talent high talented and high skilled young individuals and professionals that have uh considerable companies and um the g20yea it’s it’s like um uh it’s three days where you have all these um great entrepreneurs and business young business people um where you just connect to to make more business i mean it’s such a great scene to to really um make very good connections um to expand businesses expand frontiers and um yeah in the end it’s just it’s like the g20 where you have a countries that get together to do business and to do partnerships and so on well it’s it’s exactly the same thing but for a younger uh target for a younger segment of skilled entrepreneurs and business people that are ready to go to those three days wherever the g20 is and just like develop commercial relationships professional relationships and also friendships i mean the g20yea group is a great group i keep in touch personally with so many people um of the of the committees and it’s such a helpful network it’s friendship oriented but it’s also super uh business oriented yeah it’s super useful and uh fun and um work-wise super um how can i say it’s like it gives uh when you when you sit and then you harvest it gives a lot of uh fruits we say in spanish i don’t know how you say it in english okay so basically it’s a great network to be a part of is what i can understand and then you know once you synergize with other members there is obviously you know you can sort of uh help leverage each other’s network right exactly exactly it’s it’s about making um somehow it’s about making business friends for sure and uh you have very talented people so it’s again i would agree on what you say it’s a very good place to network and find partners to make your business grow excellent excellent uh so are you uh do you have any plans to do an ic or an io for lucas we don’t uh we don’t have any plans for ads in the moment um we have uh and this is not an investment advice but we have uh the the thoughts or as our analysis um we believe that there will be a major but major like a clearing of many of the tokens and currencies out there we believe that very few will be standing in the next short to mid-term right so um we just want to give our business uh traditional growth while using not traditional and innovative approaches to the market but yeah definitely um ico or io is not on our current plans okay um we we don’t um dismiss um having tokens but we would not sell if we have any tokens at all it’s it’s just to reward people and we have designed some mechanisms but we’re still not sure that we want to create a new value let’s say we we’re considering to use other vehicles such as a decentralized stable coins like die or just other vehicles to reward people rather than creating a new asset in the markets where when again we really think that a major breakdown of yeah it’s already yeah it’s already yeah we don’t believe that uh it’s a good timing to to make an ic or io right now yeah okay but you know never say never so what is uh you know perhaps how do you see uh the ecosystem growing in the next uh five years or so like what do you have in your product lineup so in the next five years you can expect lucas to be all over latin america and africa okay we are specifically focusing on the emerging markets we really think that everybody is competing for europe north america asia and again people in those countries do not need crypto like no crypto company is solving any problem whatsoever in those regions and we want to read as entrepreneurs that we consider ourselves problem solvers we actually want to solve a problem and we know that by doing a crypto company we’ll be solving problems in the southern hemisphere and places like in the emerging markets to put a better name like africa and latin latin and south america especially so in five years you can expect lucas to be the biggest company in those markets we’re super confident on that you can expect lucas to be a super decentralized and a customer-oriented company right now we’re deploying a non-custodial fiat to crypto wallet with tokenized fiat funds that is a product that is going to be released really soon so you can think about that for example as an abra yeah but with decentralized fiat so essentially what we’re doing is when whenever somebody sends us a funds to our bank account let’s say that you send a hundred dollars because you want to fund your account we will receive those hundred dollars we tokenize them and send it to them so even though we still have the custody of those funds which is not a hundred percent decentralized like decentralized non-custodial sorry it’s that part is still custodial at least we give free movement of the assets to the users so like if you’re in any custodial solution they just they could whenever they want they can ban your account they can freeze your funds whatever they give complete control to the users and like we literally do not know what is going on with those tokenized fiat funds the only thing we worry on and work on is cash in and cash out so on the on and off ramps that’s all we do okay this product is going to be launched really soon it will allow people to send both crypto and fiat funds through whatsapp and telegram okay so that is something interesting for the people here in latin america they will be able to send people a money to their friends families and whatever wherever they are at any time just through whatsapp or telegram which it’s people use a lot here yeah we’re bringing that payments product lineup as well and yeah i mean just products then again solve the problem solve the problem that people have here that is a inflation devaluation cost very costly remittances and so on so what you can expect from us is all products that are the opposite like access to defi access to good performing crypto financial products decentralized and non-custodial solutions wallets etc payments and remittances through social media all these kind of products that are exactly the opposite i mean they are the pain the painkillers of the pains that people have right hopefully everyone in africa instead of using mpesa will be using us and latin america as nobody uses mpesa hopefully they will be using us too excellent that’s such a wonderful vision so basically your product is a painkiller rather than a vitamin is what i understand and you know painkillers tend to always really go big so excellent what are your views on libra like the facebook token that it’s coming out with and we had initially spoken about it you know what are your thoughts about it and what do you think where is it gonna go or do you think it deserves the kind of flack that it is receiving on you social media yeah so first of all i think that we are like in the 21st century version of the french revolution yeah and i’ll tell you why in the french revolution what happened is that the governments were the nobles right yes and then you had the people that were making a lot of money i don’t know how you call in english but in spanish it’s the burgesses okay i don’t know how you say that in english right but it was basically the emerging class of yeah the middle class yeah they were yeah that they are the merchants that were start started to make a lot of money right they said we some many of us have more money than many of these nobles that are bankrupt right why can’t we why can’t we have uh more power we should have more power right um so so well what happened uh back then was that they killed all the nobles and everything and they took over the power and made the french revolution with equality freedom and liberty and liberty yeah um so so what is happening now from what i understand is something very similar where you have big corporations that are making a bunch of money and just to give an example um walmart has a revenue of 500 billion dollars a year right the argentine government as a whole has a revenue of 120 billion dollars a year right so like walmart’s economy is four times uh 0.5 times 4.5 times bigger than argentine argentina’s government’s economy right yeah so um you can already see how taking the analogy you have uh this emerging class yeah the corporations which already have more financial power than the nobles the governments in the space so from my understanding what we’re seeing is that all the corporations are now saying like why don’t we have more power yeah more money um so the only difference is that they won’t i’m pretty sure they won’t kill anyone or or anything this won’t be a bloody revolution yeah this won’t be a bloody i mean at least from the physical point of view because yeah um because governments will suffer a lot but i mean it’s the the own problem that they created i mean like uh it’s the problem the problem of capitalism is like uh the the power starts going to where the money is and if the money is not in the hands of the government all governments i’m sorry to tell you but you’re losing the power yeah um so having said that i really think uh that that is happening corporations are already seeing that they can or should have more power and that’s why like the libra project is something it’s probably the biggest financial um project ever in history to have been proposed because yeah we are literally talking about a global currency that won’t be supported or run by governments but but that will be run by the biggest companies in the world that have access and uh maybe like 90 percent penetration um rate at every country um so and from my personal point of view and to be honest uh and as a big pure bitcoiner and a fan of cryptocurrencies especially bitcoin i’m like uh i my friend’s father with me that i’m i’m a bitcoin nothing could have been better for the industry than libra projects i mean uh i i feel that the libra project will bring in two billion users that will have access to bitcoin one click away one tap away and that is so big that is so huge for the first time um all the people that do not know about wallets about cryptos about everything yeah facebook will be doing the education for all of us in vitalization for all of us and so on about cryptos and wallets and private keys and this and that they will be doing that for all of us so the benefits of that will be seen by the industry as a whole so like that’s two billion people that we do not need to educate already that’s two billion people that facebook will spend the money educating them and then we will be the ones offering their services because like for you in your market everyone will buy libra in facebook with just an easy ux and when they want to trade they say okay now i have crypto maybe i can trade it for another and start investing in this crazy world where anybody can invest and they just just go to your exchange in your region they began trading in maybe like 10 minutes whereas today to like begin the experience it’s so hard and if you don’t find the right company and i mean it’s it’s such a hassle and i mean facebook will make will make cryptocurrencies not a hassle and that’s why i see a lot of people do not like facebook they say like we gain too much power which which yes they will gain a lot i’m definitely agreed agreeing with that i think as a person about my industry and we bring decentralization and the worst case scenario is we have two billion new users so i couldn’t be sad with that yeah yeah even i think that you know a lot of flack that libra is facing is because of a because of certain things in their right paper that makes it look a little less than decentralized and be uh it is primarily because you know people have a issue with facebook in general and that is why with the privacy aspect in mind they are a criticizing leader as well but as you said it’s it would be great for mass adoption and for educating people because there is a learning curve involved uh because it’s it’s actually there is no learning curve but because there is so much unorganized information when you start uh you know searching for crypto or if you want to start off uh on this path uh then you know facebook as you said would be educating all these people at their expense and that means more users for us yeah i i mean i agree so much so much uh and yeah i think that again the key point about libra is that i i usually when i see big companies that have spent a lot of money in ux you buy customer education and i always say like thank you because then it all comes to like see uh i mean i don’t believe in reinventing being the one that reinvents the wheel but i believe in like um you know always innovating but making sure that uh you take things from from people or companies that were successful before and um that definitely um facebook will be like the the explorer with the machete in the front line that will be educating 2 billion users at a time i completely um a love and and yeah i love companies that are doing huge efforts and um in furthering this movement and in furthering this yeah right so i i think as you said that in because if we are about constantly innovating we should learn from other people’s mistakes or try to at least reap the that they have left behind for us rather than building the wheel from scratch uh you know we can make our own mistakes and learn from them so it’s good that we want to reap the rewards from the companies in the same space because ultimately we are all in this together because we have to further the movement of blockchain and crypto to actually solve real problems and that can only be done once we sort of come together and we synergize a hundred percent a hundred percent and like i’m i mean let’s my bet for the future and like if then i’m not correct like i would be super surprised because i’m super confident on this one i can a hundred percent uh state that after the libra project uh begins and people start and libra starts onboarding users yeah or the industry as a whole will see growth in their every company this industry will see growth i’m like a hundred percent sure about that excellent so you know more to that and that and i hope the same what is your vision for uh you know the next year in terms of crypto in terms of the growth in this space how do you envision it um i think that in next year we’re gonna have a great um tech uh tech improvements um it was pretty surprising to see the lightning network uh channel uh volume to to go down when bitcoin started going going up but but i still i mean there’s a lot of people working on privacy zero knowledge snarks and so on and as a as a person that i really like the concept about crypto privacy and freedom i think that there are very good um tech research and improvements over the ethereum network over the bitcoin network um then we have rootstock that is deploying or giving smart contracts to bitcoin i see that the industry uh is growing uh people as we have been through a bear market i saw a lot of entrepreneurs focusing on real use case uh use cases as well and not like in the 2017 which was basically like tokenized and blockchainized everything which made really no sense yeah because blockchain is is not the best for everything so like you know what blockchain would be useful for because now because this technology in its infancy then there are a lot of projects that actually just add blockchain uh just for the heck of it right uh to their white paper or about their project without realizing that perhaps it might not be the best fit just uh because it’s the hot uh you know word and hot uh you know in this space it doesn’t mean that you know you are going to add it to your project unless it’s bringing some value it is it is completely you know useless a hundred percent a hundred percent and uh and that was something in 2017 like initially people were were blockchainizing everything and made no sense whatsoever but now i see that with this like the past year with the bear market and like people becoming more skeptical about crypto i saw that the industry as a whole uh started to focus a lot more on uh use cases that made sense that actually worked um that were worth working on from the crypto point of view with game theory and protocol mechanism designs and so on and from the blockchain uh aspects giving transparency uh traceability and so on as well and and then you have like these major companies that are improving uh that they’re i mean i i love the supply chain scene with big players like walmart into it uh i know that in asia big people big players are jumping into it and yeah it’s a matter of time like the the good thing is that right now bitcoin blockchain is on everybody’s mind especially in this space it’s super exciting i think that this is a groundbreaking year next year we have the halving so like uh it this is like the new starting point so so yeah i think that uh people in the blockchain and crypto industry will see very good sustained and sustainable growth as well so uh yeah i see a really good year coming yeah yeah i think it’s it’s about you know how the strong and which would survive the strong and the relevant will survive and that is what is so wonderful uh about correction and that is what you know i think i completely agree that in the coming year these are very exciting times in the coming year it’s just going to get better and better so this brings me to my penultimate question um who are the thought leaders that you enjoy following in this industry um sorry i i didn’t listen the last part yeah yeah i’m saying who are the thought leaders that you you know really uh follow in this industry in the blockchain space who you sort of uh you know who you like reading their tweets whose blogs you follow who are the thought leaders that you or influencers that you follow in this space okay so of course of course that and then from piano of course that i follow him yeah uh uh i i think that almost everyone will say that they are his number one fan so i’m part of the number one fans of pompeano too yeah then i really like uh following uh from rootstock um of course that uh vitalik buterin to see what is going through his mind yeah gabriel kurman um those are like probably my my favorite people i i sometimes find interesting um very silvered opinions i mean not sometimes i usually find them yeah interesting yeah um and then i i love reading a lot about a the critic point of view i love the bitfinex uh uh twitter account which which talks all day long about a crypto as a scam yeah i i like reading that as well just to see what’s the other side of the um and then yeah like those are probably my my most favorite ones uh then i i’m i’m a really big fan of the argentine ecosystem so i follow uh almost all of them as well i feel like argentina has from the infrastructure point of view they have a a huge people huge experts um well right a man who had out of zeppelin announced that he was leaving zeppelin um which was like pretty sad because uh i think that he has his contribution to the ethereum um network and community is very very relevant with so many things that they did at zeppelin for ethereum right but but yeah they they are my my most favorite ones but for sure i mean like the the number one is anthony pompiano like he’s just so so fun to read and i mean he’s uh he’s like such an all-in person and well of course i think draper uh our friend team to whom i i say hi i’ll send him the link to this podcast hey he he i mean he’s a visionary he really saw bitcoin when uh when bitcoin was quotation marks yeah when bitcoin was nothing let’s say or was super small yeah the guy bought 30 000 bitcoins how like how much of a visionary do you need to be to buy like 30 000 bitcoin in like 2012 you have to be yeah i don’t know god yeah yeah no you have to be really future you know seeing and you need to have great foresight to actually uh be able to recognize this kind of technology are there any uh women thought leaders that you also follow because we are all about promoting uh you know women on this particular podcast and that is something i personally believe in as well that there are a lot of uh women in this space who do not get their due so could you tell us a little you know name a few uh female argentinian thought leaders uh and you know our listeners yeah yeah i i follow a lot uh florencia ravena from moon okay she i mean i’ve never met her personally but i mean she i love the work she does she’s so about the crypto industry she’s so passionate about what she does and at moon they are creating i mean they already have already developed and always improving a great bitcoin wallet it’s a very very good technology and um yeah they just do uh amazing things and i love following her yeah and there are more but that i have on my twitter that i usually read i maybe i don’t have the names in my mind right now yeah like to be honest i’m i’m i’m such a a i i’m a fan of women at work i and in our team we have no women yet in the core team we have a women to whom we outsource uh jobs but like something that we want to have in our company more women than men because like uh so if any woman is listening to this podcast please reach out to me because we’re actively looking uh for women to generate our team from the development side from the business development side or literally anything because again we really believe that a change in the 21st century will become mostly from women right we believe that women in work are much better than men as well uh i really believe that i don’t have a i personally don’t have the eye and the details uh that any women can have like if i am good at it probably most of of women will be much better at that um so yeah i mean parts of our company culture which we’re still growing so um so we we’re still on time to fulfill that is to really have more women than men because again we really think we believe that on the 21st century and especially in this industry that it’s so innovative the change will be leaded by women and we want to make sure that all the women leaders are with us oh yeah those are wonderful thoughts i think you just thought that you’re thinking about hiring more women in the team and uh you’re thinking about gender balance that is a very important conversation i think to be had in this space moreover as you said you know it need there needs to be a balance if you’re going to further this movement it can’t be a one-sided uh sort of a movement uh women need to be a part of it and that’s a wonderful that now you know you have told our listeners that you’re hiding and i i will actually you know uh put in your link in profile in the description as well so that they can reach out to you directly and you can uh you know get more women on board so um i i will i will definitely will i definitely will and yeah again like uh every person that knows me as well could tell you that every time i’m talking to a person i tell them i’m desperately looking uh for a woman uh to join our team like um like really really really uh for every 10 people we have we want to have six women and four men um we believe that that is the way to the path to success in year 2019 and ahead that’s wonderful to hear absolutely so this brings me to my last question and this is the question that i ask everybody who’s on this particular podcast uh how would you suggest to our listeners that they can start living on blockchain i mean everything is there so if i were you a listener i would buy bitcoin and ethereum right i would um just put uh those assets into decentralized lending or companies like sales and so on that provide interest on those assets right and um and just enjoy i mean that’s the the first part of the traditional banking services which is like checking storage and interest you need remittances and so on well uh the assets are a remittance vehicle by itself so you can directly send it to whoever you need to send or if they don’t know how to convert that then there’s tons of companies out there that provide remittances with crypto for much better rates than western union banks and so on um so yeah i mean yeah like everyone should begin by buying bitcoin and ethereum and as soon as you click buy or as soon as you receive your first cryptocurrencies um then your life has been changed because yeah you’ve taken a step into the movement then a hundred percent and like i to every person i know and i love i tell them um just buy even if it’s a hundred dollars just buy that in bitcoin or ethereum and in 10 years you’ll you’ll just invite me for three months holidays to wherever you want right yeah that is what you know a lot of people do not understand that they can buy a part of a bitcoin as well they seem to think that you have to buy a whole bitcoin so this is a good myth that we are busting here uh and this is wonderful it has been absolutely wonderful talking to you uh i am so impressed by your uh vision of especially for the latino market and the african markets the emerging markets that you guys are trying to target uh do you have any last thoughts for her um no just tell everyone that i enjoy the ride this is a super super early stage for the technology and there will be a lot of obstacles in the way um but this industry is great uh many of the best talents in the world is is joining um the blockchain and the crypto industry so it will only be growth from here um and yeah just enjoy the ride i mean in 20 years people people that are five years old won’t be able i mean they won’t believe that we use we really used to use coins and uh and traditional paper money and that we use banks uh for uh to do remittances or we use services like these depredatory companies are charged like 20 percent to send money abroad and so on people will say like why did you do that yeah yeah so so make sure that you can get on an early stage so uh you become uh you change your financial and economic situation like for the economy of the future this is definitely um we are all building a new economic system together um it’s a great stage to to be part of it excellent uh thank you so much for taking out the time to speak to me even last one hour uh i have had a wonderful time and uh all the best for your you know platform uh all the best for the vision i hope you’re able to hire more women and uh this it’s been wonderful thank you so much for it thank you i hope you have a great time and that the rest of the year smiles the most to you and yeah hope to do something together in the future absolutely i will be speaking to you about that once i stop the recording thank you so much amazing bye